CBS
Posted on 11/01/2005 9:38:05 PM PST by freespirited
NEW YORK In the upcoming December issue of Vanity Fair, Mary Mapes, the CBS News producer who lost her job after the disputed "60 Minutes II" Bush/National Guard report, writes, "I must answer the bloggers, the babblers and blabbers, and the true believers who have called me everything from 'feminazi' to an 'elitist liberal' to an 'idiot.'
"If I was an idiot, it was for believing in a free press that is able to do its job without fear or favor. ...I didn't know that the attack on our story was going to be as effective as a brilliantly run national political campaign, because that is what it was: a political campaign."
The December article, not yet generally available, is an excerpt from Mapes' soon-to-be-published book, "Truth and Duty" (St. Martin's) on her career and the episode often called Rathergate. Vanity Fair says Mapes sets out to "answer her critics."
In a statement released Monday, CBS News said: "Mary Mapes' actions damaged CBS News as an organization and brought pain to many colleagues with whom she worked. As always, revisionist history must be tested against the facts." It pointed to its independent panel's 200-page report, adding: "We believe those facts speak for themselves."
Mapes writes that she had felt the Guard segment was a big success after airing on Sept. 8, 2004, until the following morning at 11 a.m. when she learned that a bunch of "far-right" Web sites were claiming that documents were forged.
That same day about 3 p.m. she recalls staring at the Drudge Report and seeing a big picture of Rather at the top and a headline saying that he was "shaken" and hiding in his office. The phone rang and it was Rather, telling her he'd just heard about the Drudge headline and he wanted to assure her that he was not "shaken" and was not even in his office.
He signed off with a favorite expression of his: "FEA" for "---- 'em all."
She writes that what she didn't know at the time was that the attack on the "60 Minutes" piece was just part of the Bushites "sliming" of those who raised questions about the president.
After detailing the unraveling of the Guard segment, Mapes describes crying her eyes out at an airport bathroom after Rather tells her by phone that CBS was going to apologize for the report and appoint a committee to investigate what went wrong. Rather also told her to get a lawyer.
Finally, she details how in that probe the question of how "liberal" she was became paramount. She likens it to the days of Sen. Joe McCarthy and charges that it was ironic that the same network that stood up to McCarthy with the Edward R. Murrow broadcasts was now caving in to similar tactics now: "Suspected liberals had become the new 'Communists...What in the world would Edward R. Murrow think of his network now?"
In the end she observes that the outside panel that probed the report and found correct procedures were lacking did not investigate the legitimacy of the documents. She claims that a researcher has since shown her typography on other documents from the period Bush was in the Guard that suggest that the memos she obtained cannot be easily dismissed "as being forgeries."
She also calls one of the co-leaders of that probe, Dick Thornburgh, worse than an "empty suit...He was completely full if it."
Throughout the article, Vanity Fair frequently cuts away for bracketed response from others involved in the episode who answer or rebut some of her charges.
At one point, for example, she asserts that CBS News chief Andrew Heyward said that if the bloggers could come up with "lousy analysts" to attack the authenticity of the memos CBS could find its own "lousy analysts."
In an e-mail to Vanity Fair, Heyward denied this.
How 'bout moonbat?
You know what I hear she going mention Free Republic in her memiors that be classic
Their Communistic dirty tricks worked in bye gone days, BUT NOT NOW! A HA HA HA HA. The internet, and FrRepublic is putting an end to their lies and dirty tricks.
Gee, Mary, maybe it had something to do with the lack of truth, you think?
Oh good......we need more new members!
---.I didn't know that the attack on our story was going to be as effective as a brilliantly run national political campaign, because that is what it was: a political campaign."---
What a nerve! She should be ashamed to go out in public and she knows it, but she can't atone and ask forgiveness because she doesn't believe in that sort of thing.
It was fiction to achieve your hard left agenda.
Oh yeah, she's an idiot alright.
LOL. The gift that keeps on giving. Remember, her peers categorized her as "brilliant"....
Mary, if you don't classify your story as "an almost brilliant ran national political campaign", I would be interested in what you would call your scam.
Pathetic. Yes, Mary, they can. And that's as weak a defense as the "fake but accurate" formulation that convinced absolutely nobody.
And yes, it was a "political campaign," - not the outcry against the forgeries, but the forgeries themselves. Mapes was not a victim of McCarthyism, she was a victim of what is at the least credulity, ineptitude, and unprofessionalism and at most a particularly clumsy attempt to swindle and smear.
"She claims that a researcher has since shown her typography on other documents from the period Bush was in the Guard that suggest that the memos she obtained cannot be easily dismissed "as being forgeries."
Mary, bring him/her and the other documents out and let them be examined, IF they exist.
I hope they don't trash Free Republic like Hollywood trash Joan Crawford with Fayne Dunway
That what this forum dont' need PR be remember as wire hanging alcoholic Hollywood b***h
I just hope some Hollywood writer do number on CBS pick up this book rights LOL!
lol
She should be facing charges! She tried to mislead us in one of the most important selections for the Republic and then she complains when found out and called on it. She'll be married to this fraud for the rest of her life.
I'll betcha anything this is a reference to the elevated "th" and the half-space non-elevated "th" with an underscore they showed on TV as proof that the elevated "th" could have been typed in the Guard office.
This whole affair really turned me. I don't know which is more astounding, their brazenness or their stupidity.
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